Political Uses of Horace’s Actium Ode, ca. 1640–60

• In Event: Marvell II: Poetry, Poetics, and Politics in Marvell

Abstract

Marvell’s Horatian Ode demands comparison with (above all) Horace’s celebration of Octavian’s victory over Cleopatra at Actium. This paper will provide some context for Marvell’s reworking of the Actium Ode by looking at other responses written during the civil wars, by Mildmay Fane, by Richard Fanshawe, and by Charles Cotton. My main focus will be Fanshawe’s translation of the poem, which has long been identified as a possible source for Marvell’s stanzaic form. Fanshawe’s Horatian lyrics have been seen — most notably by David Norbrook — as representative of a "royalist Horatianism"; my paper will argue that Horace was for Fanshawe, and during the period more broadly, a model for political equivocation. That is, Fanshawe’s Horatian ode has more in common with Marvell’s than metre alone.

Author

• Henry Power, University of Exeter